Sunday, June 17, 2012

Hi Guys! Happy Father's Day to all the good Dads out there!!!!
Having been asked by 2 people on this list to write a review of the new
Ridley Scott movie, Prometheus, (should I see it) I did so and here it is!
WARNING: if you REALLY love sci-fi movies and fully intend to go see
Prometheus, then save this review for later reading ­ I give away too much
of the plot in this review if you plan to see it.
Prometheus Review by MDI
OK, yesterday I ponied up the funds and let my old love for good science
fiction get my butt in a theater seat for the new Ridley Scott movie,
³Prometheus.² Here are a few observations and comments about Prometheus in
no particular order.
It is billed as a ³prequel² to Ridley Scott¹s 1979 classic space-horror
thriller, Alien, but it didn¹t seem like a prequel to me inasmuch as the
plot didn¹t dovetail into the plot of the previous movie. The setting of
Prometheus is supposed to be the years 2089-2091, and I don¹t remember the
year-setting of the original Alien, so maybe this one precedes it, but it
doesn¹t really matter in any case since both the plots are independent,
although sharing quite a few common elements.
Many people consider the original Alien to be the scariest movie ever made.
It is without doubt that Ridley Scott is a genius Director, one of the best
alive, and he has a way with space movies.
The visual art of the movie is astounding, as many fantasy/fiction movies
are these days, since we¹re in a time in which anything the mind can imagine
can be put on the screen. It¹s easy to take the visual artistic complexity
for granted after a few minutes because you get used to it, whereas if you
saw screen-shots of scenes outside the watching of the movie, you¹d be
amazed at the consistently stunning visual art.
Basic plot set-up: Prometheus begins with an archeological dig (on the
Earth in 2089) in which two young archeologists break through into a
never-before-discovered cavern with nicely preserved cave-paintings on the
walls. One of these paintings depicts a human form pointing upward to a
group of six (I think) spots representing stars. Our attention is drawn to
this group of stars as the archeologists gaze in awe and, with bated breath,
whisper one to the other that this is the same star-pattern that they¹ve
found on ancient sites all over the world. In subsequent scenes, they lay
out their working theory that the alien race who ³seeded² human DNA upon the
Earth came from a certain part of the galaxy that is represented by this
particular star-pattern.
The next thing you know, we¹re aboard a huge modern space ship named
ŒPrometheus¹ as it arrives at its destination after a 2+ year journey to the
star system in question and a particular planet that presents the best
possibilities for life to have developed. The mission has been commissioned
by a single mega-rich Earthling. He is very old and believes that the
possibility of contacting ³the Architects² (³architects² of human DNA) might
provide a way to defeat his imminent death. Herein lies the philosophical
ground for the movie, in my opinion.
The movie has quite a few elements that are ³echoes² of the original Alien.
The first one (below) was disappointing to me since it kinda lowered the
quality of the otherwise high-quality sci-fi:
1. As the members of the crew emerge from their stasis sleeping chambers in
which they¹re suspended for the trip, we¹re introduced to each of them. Two
of them are ignorant, dumb-ass White males (of course) who are just along
for the ride as technicians making money. Now would that really happen on a
mission like this? Would you cast these ignorant fools whose personalities
are more like 1950¹s hillbillies who had never learned anything but hunting
squirrels and possums than deep-space technicians of the future? These two
guys die in short order, so their ignorant personalities have no place in
the plot other than fools to get eliminated early. That was a huge
casting/story error, IMO.
2. The kick-ass woman main character who defeats ridiculous odds, including
a string of physical feats that would make a ³strong-man² competitor give
up, immediately after having undergone a caesarian section to remove a
fast-growing alien in her womb. That was also stupid.
3. The lair of the eggs, each of which carried an alien waiting to be
activated by an unsuspecting human.
4. The 99.9% human acting-and-appearing android, ³David,² who handles the
navigation while the humans are in stasis. There is no attempt to disguise
the fact that David is a machine. From the moment you see him, before the
others awaken, his movements are smooth and controlled (reminiscent of the
³Data² character in Star Trek, Next Gen) and you immediately think, ³robot.²
Another direct quote from the 2nd movie, ŒAliens¹ is that David gets his
head-section ripped off toward the end but is still able to help our heroine
prevail while laying on its left ear and with gurgling speech. Presumably
the head-section also shows our heroine how to fly an alien space-ship to
make her final escape, so she carries David¹s head-section on board in a bag
while talking to him. She even drops him once and apologizes!
5. Everybody dies except the heroine, who miraculously escapes.
Now all of those things make the movie sound pretty darn slap-stick, huh?
But I didn¹t experience it like that at the time ­ I was mesmerized by the
incredible scenes and fast action, so I never realized the silliness in the
plot until I thought about it while writing this review!
The underlying foundation of the story was that human DNA was intentionally
Œseeded¹ on the Earth in ages past by a human-like race from another part of
the galaxy. There is also mention of the possibility that the ³Alien²
creatures were developed as a bio-weapon to then wipe out the ³human
experiment.² My personal opinion is that this possible seeding (or at least
modification of human DNA by an alien race) is not a far-out, crazy notion.
While being far from ³proven,² there is a LOT of anecdotal archeological and
biological information that would support that hypothesis. Some
commentators I¹ve heard have tried to present an either-or situation between
³God created humanity² and ³an alien race created humanity.² In my world,
this presents a false dichotomy and is completely anthropocentric thinking,
like ³the Earth is the center of Creation.² God creates Everything, so the
possibility of seeding the human race on this planet is well within the
creative possibilities of the Being in which all exists.
The ³Aliens² in this movie are not the same as those in previous Alien
movies ­ they¹re more like very aggressive giant squids.
Toward the end of the movie, the human party finds that one of the
³Architects² is still alive in a stasis condition in one of the pods in a
hidden chamber. They awaken the Architect, expecting to learn some answers
to the questions posed by their findings. But, to their surprise, the
Architect just goes wild, smashing and throwing them around the chamber like
a mad elephant (he¹s about 9 feet tall and built like the best pro
wrestlers). That¹s when David¹s head gets torn off. This development was
ridiculously disappointing, plot-wise. Here¹s a humanoid race that, we are
to believe, is intellectually and scientifically advanced beyond humanity by
tens or hundreds of thousands of years. One of them is awakened after a
long period of stasis by another humanoid race and he immediately goes wild
trying to kill them? Ridiculous!
As a final plot-continuation twist, as the heroine makes her escape (having
a conversation with an android¹s head that she¹s carrying in a bag), the
Architect, who has taken off in one of his space-ships, starts to flop
around as the Alien which has been ³cocooned² in his body starts to break
out thru the rib cage as in the original movie. When this Alien ³birth
process² concludes, we see that the Alien that comes from the Architect is
very much the same as the original Alien species from the first movie. I
guess that¹s where the ³prequel² characterization comes in, but I still
don¹t quite understand the connection since there is no implied plot
continuation into the original save that original-looking Alien showing up
at the end.
Summing up: my long-standing love for science fiction led me to enjoy the
experience of watching this movie. The visual art of the movie is so
astounding that I didn¹t really notice the bad plot lines (for the most
part) until I got home and started thinking about it as a story. I also
didn¹t think it had a lot of gratuitous gore. I had been afraid of that
before seeing the movie, but I found the violent aspect of the movie more or
less appropriate for 2012 movie sensibilities and ³manageable² with 2-3
places of not watching the screen, since you know what¹s happening anyway
and why put those images into your visual cortex and memory banks?
On the question of whether I would recommend seeing it or not, I would say
that it depends on your relative love for science fiction. If you¹re
way-high on that scale, the visual aspect of Prometheus is worth seeing. If
not, the violence and silly plot lines (especially after my having pointed
them out in this review) will be a bummer.
One last word. If you¹re a person with the sensibilities and knowledge of
how movies and entertainment in general are being used these days as an
intentional tool of social engineering, you might be curious about that
aspect of this movie. Does it deliver overt and/or implied messages that
service the AGENDA behind the social engineers? To that question I have to
say that Prometheus is fairly benign. Yes, there are some messages that can
be interpreted in that way, but there are also messages that can be
interpreted as being in opposition to the agenda of the social engineers.
Going over them all specifically would be too long a discussion and I can¹t
pretend to remember them all ­ sometimes they fly by in the dialogue.
However, I¹ll mention just one of the positive ones:
Earlier I mentioned that the Prometheus mission was commissioned by a very
old Trillionaire earthling, ³Weyland,² whose goal was to find the knowledge
that would save him from death and possibly extend his life indefinitely.
Late in the movie we find that the tottering Weyland has been aboard the
Prometheus all along, unbeknownst to the crew, with the exception of David
the android and the corporate ³manager² of the mission, played by the ever
beautiful Charlize Theron.
Well, as mentioned above, Weyland dies toward the end of the movie, when the
Architect, who was supposed to have been the source of this life-saving
knowledge, goes wild and tries to kill everybody in the room. This, I felt,
was a very nice philosophical ³quote² from the grand-daddy of such literary
messages, Mary Shelley¹s Frankenstein. Not only was the result the same ­
Prometheus even quotes the scene from the early Frankenstein movies of
giving life to the lifeless ³monster² with great anticipation only to be
crushed as the monster does not behave as expected or wanted.
The message, as interpreted by me, is that the pursuit of physical
immortality is a result of a profound misunderstanding of the nature of
human existence and the nature and purpose of the cycle of living and dying.
Such pursuit is inherently ego-driven and ends inevitably in
self-destruction.
MDI